When you take something you believe in, and you offer it to someone you want to believe in, but it’s turned away, it’s hard. Sorry for being cryptic – I’m not even sure if I should be writing about this here. And these are raw feelings. But I just receive a polite rejection to my query of “Sun-Walking,” having been checking my email spastically for the last week and a half to hear such word.
There were several difficult things about having sent out “Sun-Walking.” First, I’d finished it so soon before I sent it. I mentioned somewhere else that I’m used to sitting on a story for much longer, until my feelings about it have cooled, before sending it into the arms of a critic. And this particular query included the first 5,000 words, which I hastily patched up but still read with slight unease. This is such a long story (140k, omg), and I knew that the arc of the story is too big to be viewed in parts. That’s why I would have pitched it as an epic, rather than a trilogy. But I also wanted to pitch it as one rather than three stories because I knew it had its weak spots. One such weak spot was…you know, the entire beginning. It didn’t help that I started it three years ago, and that the beginning of the story had yet to have a really thorough run-through, and that several times I’d almost decided to re-work the whole story.
It had its weaknesses, and now having been rejected, those weaknesses look particularly garish. It’ll probably be best for me to not even read through it until I’ve accepted what this rejection does and does not mean. But I can’t help wondering what to do with it now. As I’ve gushed previously, I really believe in Lucienne. So I’ll find a way to make that clear to others, no matter how long it takes me.
